


Too late to restage the play

by laireshi



Category: Iron Man (Comic), Marvel 616
Genre: Angst, F/M, Mentions of Suicide, director of shield, post-CW
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-22
Updated: 2013-09-22
Packaged: 2017-12-27 06:54:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/975784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laireshi/pseuds/laireshi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"'I'm not Steve Rogers,'<em> Maya wanted to say when Tony kissed her on the Helicarrier, his eyes closed. She had half a mind to push him away, because she knew he wasn't thinking of her, but in the end, it didn't matter.</em>"</p><p>Their relationship was anything but healthy. They knew it. Probably.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Too late to restage the play

**Author's Note:**

> Big thanks to my dear ILookDaftWithOneShoe for beta-reading :)
> 
> I re-read Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. and needed a break after finishing my BB.  
> MayaTony happened.

_'I'm not Steve Rogers,'_ Maya wanted to say when Tony kissed her on the Helicarrier, his eyes closed. She had half a mind to push him away, because she knew he wasn't thinking of her, but in the end, it didn't matter. Steve Rogers was dead and Tony Stark was very much not over it.

Maybe that was the reason he got so illogical, so ridiculous with his moral claims. ' _Don't do that, Maya, don't experiment on that, don't test that, and for god's sake don't even say 'Extremis'. Stop pushing humanity forwards, because it's immoral, and what I'm doing is so much different. Better.'_

Half of the time she wanted to hit him or laugh at him and shake him till he saw just how much of a hypocrite he was being; the half when she wasn't so furious at him for stopping her all the time.

And that, that wouldn't be half as annoying as it was, if Tony was anyone else. A health and hazard inspector, a potential funder that didn't understand what she was doing, what she was hoping to accomplish, anyone. But Tony, Tony was a genius just like her, Tony got her, had always understood her; Tony was infuriating, but he had always been her friend, too, pretty much ever since they met. She had trusted him, with her life, her decisions, her _research_. She should have known better than that from the beginning, and she should have learnt from her mistakes, but he wasn't the only one of them both who could care too much.

She kissed him back, and it wasn't the first time they did this, but this time was very much different; it wasn't a friends with benefits situation anymore and maybe Tony didn't realize it yet, but she wasn't blind. He looked for absolution, for a moment of kindness, for understanding, and he couldn't have been so stupid not to know that she was the worst possible person to ask for it, but maybe he believed _redeeming_ her would help him.

He'd always been too sentimental. He'd never known how to think straight when his emotions were on line.

They were too similar not to crash and burn together.

She knew what S.H.I.E.L.D agents were whispering of her behind her back, and couldn't care less. She had her lab, and she couldn't work on the Extremis, but alien organisms S.H.I.E.L.D sometimes stumbled upon almost made it up to her. Working with Tony on projects again was exhilarating.

She knew she wasn't who he wanted to see in his apartment that's not a home, in his bed – knew it maybe better than he did – but it still hurt, stupidly, when he didn't come to her at night, when he chose flying around in the Iron Man suit and almost getting blown up to spending a few hours next to her.

She maybe should have left, somehow, run away, argue with him more – but sometimes she was starting to believe him when he was saying again that Extremis was inhuman, looking her in the eyes with his own empty and almost dead.

They were the same, but he was a better person than she, or maybe just trying to be, and that was the whole difference, because she could change the world, and Tony, for all that he called himself a futurist, was afraid of it.

He did it to himself, not her, but they'd never be sure how the war would have played up if he hadn't had the computers in his head.

He didn't held her guilty, not consciously; he'd only ever blame himself, after all. It was true that he needed someone next to him, to remind him of what it meant to touch another human. She supposed she could do it for him, and the slight attraction, maybe fascination, had always been between them to begin with. The only thing that changed for her was that he became her only surviving test object, the living proof that she had been right, that the Extremis could save lives.

He was away from her more often than with her, even if he held her close and kissed with maybe, somehow, honest affection; she knew she was just as screwed up as he was and neither of them deserved better.

But he was just one man, and she could save thousands with the Extremis, and in the end, she did believe him that it removed him from humanity, she did believe him that it was wrong, but the Extremis was the most important thing she'd ever created, she ever would create, and it didn't take much to convince herself to allow her suicide to be faked.

If she didn't then, if she stayed with that man, that so flawed man working so hard on being better and failing so painfully, one of them might have ended up like that anyway.


End file.
